Strive Less and Ease More

How much of your time are you currently spending doing things that a) you suck at and b) you don’t enjoy? If you read last issue’s article on the power of delegation, by now you have delegated some of your areas of incompetence to people who are geniuses in those areas. Myself, recognizing my total incompetence with organizing numbers, I’ve just hired a genius bookkeeper. Now, I can spend the time and energy I was using to avoid my stack of receipts to do what I’m a genius at: helping people discover and live in their genius zone. What a relief!

Last time, we explored the three D’s, the keys to spending the majority of your time in your genius zone: Drop, Delegate or Develop. You learned how delegating can free up your energy to spend more time in your genius zone. So what if you have decided to embark on the path of developing an area of competence, incompetence or excellence into an area of genius. Now what?

To begin with, make a commitment that you will enjoy the process. Most of us don’t have a clear link between learning something new and fun or ease. When we are children, we learn through play. As we grow into ‘good students’, we begin to associate learning with hardship, challenge and perseverance. Pop Quiz: when was the last time that you learned something new? How much fun did you have while learning? How much did you learn? Consider this:

“Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.” – Joanne E. Oppenheim

The quickest way to sabotage your intention to develop in any area is to make it into work or an improvement project. A certain level of challenge will excite you and invite you out of your comfort zone but a slog is unsustainable and eventually you will consciously or unconsciously destroy the game in favour of a new one. So, instead of slogging, make it your project to have more fun and to allow things to flow with ease. Ask yourself: How can I have more fun? How can I strive less and ease more?

I’ve recently made this my mantra for developing my coaching business. How can this be even more pleasurable? This morning as I sat down to edit this article, I felt a sense of heaviness, of DUTY and “get it done!” Not much fun. As I inquired into how I was making this a slog, I realized that I didn’t feel fully connected with the subject that I had written about…it seemed dry and conceptual.

I asked myself: what is more relevant right now to both my readers and me? The answer was immediately: FUN. I scratched the article I had written and wrote this! EASY.

My challenge to you today is take your level of play up a notch and to notice when you start working hard. Instead, let ease seep in to support you.

Karen McMullen guides professional women from burn-out to accessing their innate brilliance. She lives on Vancouver Island.